Capital Markets Trading Floors, Current Practice
Sam Lipson
Abstract
Financial trading has been described as technological
warfare. Whether or not you believe the metaphor, trading
systems certainly involve a tremendous need for highly reliable,
interruption free, real-time data.
Real-time, in this case, means presented accurately and
without delay. Current practice of medium to large trading
floors often involves Unix based workstations and significant
attention to reliability. There are issues to be addressed
during the construction of the physical facility, the planning
and installation of the systems, and various rules of the road
for support personnel. This paper attempts to address many of
these areas.
In this paper some of today's common practices and the
rationale behind them will be described. It is the goal to take
some of the mystery of out the black art of trading floor design
and support.
The ideas in this paper have been installed on several of
the largest trading floors in Boston, MA (USA) covering the
market segments of Foreign Exchange (F/X), derivatives, equities,
fixed income, and (US) government securities. The only market
segment not represented is commodities.
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